Effective collaboration remains an elusive goal in most teams and organizations. In survey after survey, people say they join teams hoping for openness, transparency and reliability. What they often encounter instead are opacity, obstruction, and a lack of cooperation.

This article identifies two social toxins that infect interactions in most teams, undermining performance, productivity, and morale. It then examines how teams can be inoculated against them to become healthier and more productive.

Let’s start with the first social toxin. Suppose you want to hire me to join your team, and I want to be on your team, too. Before I can get started, we need to agree on my salary. The salary I can request depends on what you are willing to pay, and what you are willing to pay depends on what I am willing to accept. Both of us lack the information the other has, and without the means to obtain said information, we face what social scientists call “a coordination problem,” a situation in which collaboration falters because the mechanisms for sharing what we know are absent or unclear.

Suppose that in this example, lacking a reliable way to ascertain my salary range, I accept another job from a company that disclosed compensation upfront, and whose offer exceeded my expectations.

The second social toxin relates to group dynamics. Suppose two cousins from Taiwan see a business opportunity for selling bubble milk tea in Spain. From their research, they find that customer willingness to pay for bubble tea is between €3.00 and €4.00 in Madrid. After considering all their expenses, they decide that to break even, they will need to price their bubble milk tea at €2.95 per cup. With a minimum profit of €0.05 per cup, they set off to Spain.

The cousins set up two competing shops next to each other in a premium location near the El Prado Museum, with one selling the €3.00 cup. They both know they can charge up to €4.00 for each cup in this area. With about 500 customers each day, they estimate that roughly 80% would buy from whichever store offers the lowest price. The remaining 20%, for reasons including brand loyalty, would still buy from the other shop where higher margins make up for lower volume. Figure 1 shows how their pricing strategy affects daily sales.

The table in Figure 1 makes clear why both cousins are better off keeping their prices at €4.00. Yet the outcome is predictable. Sooner or later, one cousin, frustrated by slow gains, cuts his price to boost sales. The other, watching his own sales slip, feels compelled to follow. After several rounds, their combined daily sales drift toward the lose-lose quadrant in Figure 1.

While it is an outcome that leaves both cousins worse off, it is what they both created inadvertently. Social scientists call this social toxin “a collective action problem.” It arises when individuals follow their own incentives in ways that harm the group — even when no one is intentionally acting together.

In both cases, the participants seek an advantageous outcome but end up producing a suboptimal one. The reason is temporal blindness: an inability to see how a series of exchanges will unfold over time. As a result, they continue behaving in ways that push them toward outcomes worse than the ones they intended.

The structures underlying team interactions are a much better predictor of our outcomes than our plans. Change the structure, and outcomes change with it. This is exactly what Google discovered in its multiyear study of high-performance teams. Its most insightful discovery was identifying the role of psychological safety.

In group settings, psychological safety refers to the freedom team members have to ask questions, offer suggestions, admit mistakes, and point out the mistakes of others. It is also one of the best predictors of how effectively a new team member joining the team will communicate, cooperate, and coordinate their work with other team members. Without psychological safety, according to Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, a new team member would end up engaging in what social scientists call “impression management.”

In Figure 2, you can see how the two symptoms of poor teamwork — coordination and collective action problems — show up whenever we perceive insufficient psychological safety in any social interaction.

Creating psychological safety begins with awareness. Team members must be able to see how their individual, often inadvertent behaviors shape collective outcomes. Anonymous surveys are one of the most effective ways to make these dynamics visible. I recommend three for the greatest impact.

The first survey gathers feedback from team members themselves. It consists of three questions, asking respondents to rate how well their teammates communicate, cooperate, and coordinate their work.

The second survey targets those who depend on the team’s work, such as leaders or first-tier clients. Again, the survey should be brief and simple, asking respondents to assess the team’s reliability, the clarity and usefulness of its communication, and the value of its contributions.

The third and final survey includes the group whose support the team relies on to get its work done. It typically includes consultants, suppliers, and people from supporting functions, such as finance and IT. The goal is to learn how the team can make the work of those it supports easier, so that its contributions are more effective and more impactful.

Once the surveys are collected, I recommend that a facilitator guide the team in discussing the results and building consensus around what the feedback reveals and where opportunities exist to improve communication, coordination, and collaboration. Only after those priorities are clearly identified should the team turn to learning and development solutions.

Collaboration is the third of the five competencies needed to thrive in the age of AI. Our discussions on the first two competencies — critical and creative thinking — are provided through the links below. In the next issue, we will consider how the way we communicate will change in the Age of AI and what we need to learn to get ready.

On critical thinking
On creative thinking

For more in-depth look at collaboration, consider:
Edmondson, Amy C. The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2018.

Ostrom, Elinor, and James Walker, eds. Trust and Reciprocity: Interdisciplinary Lessons from Experimental Research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003.

Duhigg, Charles. “What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team.” New York Times Magazine, February 28, 2016.